If we have succeeded in assembling despite all police obstacles and persecution, if we have succeeded without essential disagreements in a short time in adopting important decisions on all the burning questions of the contemporary revolutionary epoch, then this is thanks to the fact that the proletarian masses of the entire world have practically placed all these questions on the agenda through their actions and have begun to solve them practically.

We had only to record here what the masses have already conquered in their revolutionary struggle.

Not only in Eastern European, but also in Western European countries, not only in defeated countries, but also in victorious countries – as, for example, in England – the movement for Soviets spreads ever further and further, and this movement is nothing other than a movement aimed at creating a new, proletarian democracy – it is the most significant step forward toward the dictatorship of the proletariat, toward the complete victory of communism.

Let the bourgeoisie of the entire world continue to rage, let it exile, imprison, even kill Spartacists and Bolsheviks – all this will no longer help it. This will serve only to enlighten the masses, to free them from old bourgeois-democratic prejudices and to temper them in struggle. The victory of the proletarian revolution throughout the world is assured. The founding of an international Soviet republic is approaching. (Stormy applause.)

A brief newspaper account was printed on March 7, 1919 in the newspaper *Izvestia VTsIK* No. 52